HUGH ANDREW JOHNSTONE MUNRO. 36T 



revision ; — iu plain English, that a new edition of Lucretius was im- 

 peratively needed for the matter, if not for the text. Iu 18(30 he issued 

 the latter in a very handy form, introducing not a few important cor- 

 rections ; and in 1864 appeared his first real edition, — a revised text, 

 an elaborate commentary, and an English prose version. A second edi- 

 tion, in a somewhat differeut form, and with many important correc- 

 tions and additions, appeared in 1866 ; a third, revised with still more 

 devoted care, was issued in 1873 ; and a fourth, with some slight ad- 

 ditions to the commentary, has appeared since his death, in 1886, under 

 the care of Mr. J. D. Duff. 



In 1867 Munro issued from a manuscript in the Cambridge Uni- 

 versity Library an edition of the strange philosophical poem entitled 

 jjEtna. In 1868 he published, in connection with his colleague, the 

 Rev. C. W. King, a very admirable text of Horace, issued in magnifi- 

 cent form, and strikingly illustrated, through the care of his collabora- 

 tor, with engravings from ancient gems, in which Mr. King was an 

 unrivalled expert. In 1871, Munro brought out a valuable tract on 

 the newly-proposed Latin pronunciation ; and in 1878, he collected a 

 number of his papers in the Journal of Philology into a volume of 

 " Criticisms and Elucidations of Catullus," containing some of his most 

 striking views. In 1869 he was appointed to the newly constituted 

 chair of Latin, which had been founded as a memorial of his master, 

 Kennedy. But university lecturing was not to his taste, and he 

 resigned the professorship in two years. 



Munro's death occurred, as has been said, in Rome ; he had gone 

 in search of health to Italy in the spring of 1885, which proved un- 

 happily inclement. Italy was known ground to him ; he had collated 

 the great manuscripts of Lucretius at Florence and Rome in 1851, 

 and now in his closing days he enjoyed exploring the excavations of 

 antiquities in the imperial city ; but the murderous fever, of which no 

 one who has not felt it knows the horrors, carried him off on the 30th 

 of March. He lies buried near Keats and Shelley, in the famous 

 Protestant cemetery close to the Pyramid of Cestius. 



Munro was a man of short, stout frame, with a true North Country 

 expression, and a manner curiously compounded of shyness and vi- 

 vacity. His intimate friends were few, but most devotedly attached to 

 him. His habits and character were those of the scholastic hermit, and 

 it took a little courage to penetrate into his book-lined cell, which was 

 that of a truly fastidious scholar. He did not talk till quite sure of 

 his company. But to those who might and did press within the veil, 

 nothing could surpass the impression made by the immense extent of 



